Beauty brands are now paying dogs and cats to tout their products on Instagram

Chloe the Mini Frenchie in
an ad for Urban DecayChloe The Mini
Frenchie

Wearing a white bathrobe, Chloe is comfortably sprawled on a grey
fur blanket. She looks intently at the camera, while a silver
tray full of Urban Decay cosmetics lies at her feet.

Sounds like your regular beauty influencer featuring a paying
advertiser in a post on Instagram? Chloe is anything but. She is
a mini frenchie – merely one of the many rising stars in the
world of social pet influencers.

And increasingly, these four-legged furballs are becoming
the latest faces of beauty brands, touting their products and
headlining some of their biggest digital campaigns.

Urban Decay, The Body Shop, Too Faced, Nyx and Smashbox are
among the beauty brands that have recently chosen to hire dogs
and other pets as their brand ambassadors, specifically on
Instagram. There has been an uptick in the number of beauty
and fashion brands inquiring to partner with pets in recent
months, confirmed Loni Edwards, managing partner at The Dog Agency, an influencer
agency that specializes in matching brands with pet influencers.

A post shared by NYX Professional Makeup (@nyxcosmetics) on Mar 23, 2017 at 8:44pm PDT on
Mar 23, 2017 at 8:44pm PDT

Wait, there are pet influencers? Yes, due to the rise of the
visual web and platforms like Facebook and
Instagram, marketers have had a growing interest in
hiring social media personalities to hawk their products in
recent years.

Marketers either feature photos with these pets on their
feeds, or get shout outs from the pets on their personal
accounts. And they aren’t just aligning with these pet stars to
rack up the likes.

The brands are also deliberately partnering with these
pooches to let their commitment against animal cruelty be known
far and wide. Both Urban Decay and The Body Shop have
specifically been running Instagram posts against animal cruelty
recently.

The Body Shop, for example, recently launched “Forever
Against Animal Testing,” its multi-year ad campaign that aims
to raise awareness on the cruelty of animal testing in
cosmetics and gather 8 million global signatures by 2020 to
petition the U.N. to ban animal testing in cosmetics globally.

Instead of relying solely on beauty bloggers and influencers as
it has traditionally, the brand chose to also partner with five
pet influencers including Tuna Melts My Heart, Toast
Meets World, Mr. Bagel the Chinchilla, Bunny Mama, and Dogs of
Instagram. Additionally, human fashion and beauty
influencers Kristen
Leanne and KeikoLynn were
also part of the campaign.

"We’re not traditional, we’re quirky and different and are always
trying to find ways to advertise that aren't
mainstream," Andrea Blieden, vp of marketing for The Body
Shop, told Business Insider. "But this was more than that, it was
about remaining true to our activist roots. This is a campaign
against animal cruelty, so who better to speak for the
animals than the animals themselves?"

But there's no denying that these pets help the
brands broaden their audience, as well as their reach
and scope. With so many pets netting thousands and millions
of followers these days, brands can easily achieve scale,
often at a price much lower than human influencers. (Regular
influencers make anywhere between $1,000 to $200,000 on
Instagram, while a pet influencers can make between $2,000 to
$5,000 per post.) Plus, posts with pets in them tend to
outperform regular posts, with higher levels of engagement, said
Edwards.

"There’s been a greater push from brands because pet influencers
in general provide a lot of value," she said. "The content
outperforms because it tends to get higher
engagement, has more viral potential and people are more
likely to tag their friends."

"Pet influencers enjoy strong engagement rates as their
content may be more shareable, more likely to elicit a response,
and overall feel less promotional -- even when they are touting a
product," added Kamiu Lee, head of business and
development strategy at influencer network Bloglovin'.

But above all, the demand for pet influencers among specific
categories like beauty brands is reflective of a bigger trend for
Lee. According to her, as moreconsumers
become pet owners and begin to
consider pets to
be a part of their family, verticals beyond pet
food, such as home, CPG and beauty brands are starting to
leverage pet influencers.

"Household cleaning brands can work with pet
influencers to highlight the effectiveness of their product
against everyone's furry family member and beauty brands can
highlight their commitment to animal friendly products by working
with pet influencers," she said. "The personal nature of a pet
lends itself well to telling a story around a personal product
you might buy for yourself."